Airline Tech Startups Try to Adapt to Brutal Sales Market

Business prospects darkened this year for several venture-backed startups focused on providing technology to airlines to run their operations and strategy better. Skift checked in with a random sampling of startups — Countalytics, Duffel, Elenium, Flyr, LocusLabs, Unicoaero, and Volantio — to take the segment's pulse as airlines undergo an epic revenue crunch. Some startups have diversified their customer base outside of aviation. Some have used luckily timed funding rounds to fine-tune their products. Other companies have tried to stay relevant by either inventing new products or reviving old ones. "While many people think that this isn’t the ideal time to create a travel startup, the opposite is true," said Bonny Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, the investment and innovation arm of U.S. carrier JetBlue. "There are plenty of opportunities to be had with early-stage funding while founders determine product-market fit." "Travel startups have to be creati